Ingold laid a hand gently on Gil's shoulder to stop her next angry words. 'It was a logical choice,' he said smoothly. 'Alwir picked the messenger with the best chance of survival.'

Who coincidentally happened to be the man who kept him from shutting the doors on you last night, Rudy added. But, like Gil, he held his peace.

Unruffled, Ingold searched through his voluminous robes and eventually located a small hand-worn token of carved wood that he gave to the pale captain. 'I leave you

with this,' he said. The Icefalcon took it and turned it over in curious fingers. It was dark and smoke-stained, obviously old. Rudy had the impression that it was shaped like some living thing, but it was neither human nor any animal that he recognized. 'It is imbued with the Rune of the Veil,' Ingold explained, 'the rune that turns aside the eyes and the mind. It will by no means make you invisible, but it may help you on your journey.'

The Icefalcon inclined his head in thanks, while Ingold pulled on his worn blue mittens and wound ten feet of knitted grey muffler around his neck, so that the ends fluttered like banners in the chilly winds. Around the corner of the Keep, a gaggle of the herdkids appeared, Keep orphans in charge of looking after the stock. Most of them were running aimlessly, shrieking with laughter and hurling snowballs as if they hadn't been playing keep-away with death through the night. But a couple of them were leading a donkey, a scrawny miserable beast with the Earth Cross of the Faith branded on one bony hip. The donkey represented a major victory for Alwir and Ingold, since the Church owned most of the stock in the Kep. Rudy suspected Govannin had had the thing exorcised and blessed.

Other shadows appeared in the darkness of the gates. Alwir stepped forth into the wan light, dark and elegant and as unmarred as the walls, followed by Janus, Melantrys, Gnift of the Guards, and Tomec Tirkenson, who in a few days would himself be leaving with his troops, his stock, and his followers, to take the long road over the Pass to Gettlesand. Of Govannin the Bishop of Gae, there was no sign. True to her word, she would have no truck with the tools of Satan, nor lend her countenance to their endeavour.